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Black
Black mana comes from dank swamps, where things fester and rot. Death, disease, selfishness, power at any cost - these are the twisted values of the darkness. Black magic is powerful and easy to wield, but it comes with a high price. Its spells and abilities can warp the mind, poison the land, and turn creatures into nothing. Dark minions, undead creatures, and unspeakable horrors are native to the swamp, and they're as self-serving and treacherous as the mages who commanded them. Black's allies are Red and Blue, while it's enemies are White and Green. Flavor Black is a fairly simple color to understand. It loves death, disease, rotting, and all sorts of other negative things. It is very talented at what it does because it is so simple. Though it can be an aggressive color, it's not nearly as good at being so as other colors can be. When black gets aggressive, it does so by clearing the path for its creatures. Its creatures usually don't fight other creatures because black's kill spells will eliminate any opposing armies first. Black is a zero-sum color. White loves to create and enhance. It believes in continuously bringing things up to enhance the overall glory. Black doesn't care about glory. Instead of creating or enhancing, it takes. Any life that black gains has to come from somewhere, such as damaging creatures or players. If it draws any more than it naturally would, it has to pay for them in some permanent form (often its own life). Finally, black will do absolutely whatever it has to in order to gain the upper-hand. That doesn't mean it is without limits, but it is willing to sacrifice part of itself in order to do what it does more efficiently. It can call up fearsome demons with devastating effects, but it'll have to offer up something unusual in compensation. It could kill things for cheaper, but that means it will also have to offer something of its own in sacrifice. For a color so "evil" in nature, it places a very high regard for the rule of equivalent exchange. History Black was almost as good as blue when the game began. Fueled by and , it had access to temporary, but early mana the likes of which even green could not match. It could disrupt the opponent early on with cards like , and other such cards to deprive the opponent of options. Kill spells would destroy anything the opponent managed to play down, and then the lock is established. As if that wasn't bad enough, black would soon get card advantage in the form of , so it could do all this and quickly replenish its hand at a heavy cost of life. Players learned that 1 life for 1 card is an extremely profitable deal, as the cards you can draw would have a much greater impact on the game than your life would. and both broke the tournament scene, and black has continued to exercise this lesson in smaller doses since then. As for killing creatures, it's loved to kill whatever it finds. The problem is that many times, it kills by fear, pollution, disease, and other such nasty things. How do you kill something that's undead, terrify the mindless, or pollute the already polluted? You can't, and that means it hasn't been able to kill black creatures very well. The good news is that historically, anything it killed couldn't regenerate, but the bad news is that this policy is now basically abandoned to make regeneration more relevant. Wizards of the Coast is also currently experimenting with black being unable to kill green creatures rather than black. Gameplay Black usually doesn't do well in the late game. Rather, it finds innovative ways to get superior positions early on so that it can rule in the midgame. Often, this means you will sacrifice life for cards for an early advantage. Card advantage plays a very big role, though at the loss of life. It can play very well by itself through corruption effects (see ) and work with other colors all equally well. Reanimation decks have always been a favorite, finding ways to dump big, expensive creatures into the graveyard early and then play them from there for cheap. and both work well for this. Abilities Unique to black * Killing creatures, usually nonblack - * Draw cards at a cost other than mana - * Fear - * -X/-X - * Discard - * Swamp power - * Life Loss - * Universal tutoring - Shared, Major * Regeneration * Life drain - Extinct, Nonexistent * Mana flares - * Cheap, efficient creatures - Category: Colors